Adyen launches new tool to help Uber, Spotify, Airbnb unlock lost payments revenue

Adyen, one of Europe’s most-valuable private fintech companies is launching a new product designed to help customers like Uber, Spotify and Facebook maximise credit card transaction success rates and make more money on payments. The firm says 5% of online credit card payments fail globally due to issues with legacy payments processing systems, resulting in lost revenues and this is what its new product AccelerateRevenue is designed to fix.

“In payments there is something hugely frustrating about buying online and that is that sometimes it simply does not work – we know we have a valid card and still it does not work,” says Pieter van der Does, CEO and founder of Adyen speaking on stage at Money2020. “It’s a black box for merchants too – they have a seemingly valid customer that does not get through.

Online on average 85% shoppers are successful, merchants are interested in 15%. 10% is insufficient funding, 5% is shoppers that don’t get through – that is what we’ve built this product for.”

RevenueAccelerate

Dubbed RevenueAccelerate, this is a new suite of tools that is supposed to analyse why payments fail and prevent card payments failing, resulting in lost revenues for merchants. At a high level, the firm says it does this by creating a set of rules that can adapt the format and route of payments requests in real time to help ensure authorisation. Research commissioned by Forrester claims the tool increased revenues by 1.43% at merchants piloting the tool.

The product is available to all of Adyen’s 4,500 customers, which include internet heavyweights, Facebook, Netflix, Dropbox, Booking.com, Yelp, Soundcloud and Evernote.

Now ten years old, Adyen is one of the most successful payments players in Europe that many may never have heard of. It connects merchants directly with Visa, MasterCard and 250 other payment methods around the world for online and mobile transactions. Last year, the company racked up its processing volume by more than 100% to USD50bn, helping drive USD350m in revenue.

Adyen raised fresh funding last year from Iconiq Capital, which invests money for the likes of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The firm has been profitable since 2011, but speaking on the stage at Money2020, van der Dies says his advice is to raise money when you don’t need it.

“If Iconiq wants to invest in you, you don’t say no,” says van der Dies. “My advice is to try and raise when you are profitable and approaching from a position of strength not need. That’s what we’ve always been able to do. We came from industry and knew what to do to make money.”

So is there an IPO on the cards? Not any time soon. “We are working in ten year plan and the way we’re financed that is not on the agenda. We’re having a lot of fun so not looking at making any wild moves.

“It would be hugely dissatisfying, like being a racing car taking ourselves off the track before we’ve made it round.”

Fintech funding progronis

Has fintech funding boiled over and will it affect startups in the space? “As usual some will turn out fine, some will not,” says van der Does. “There is some naïve stuff going on. Payment will always have things like KYC, AML and there are limits to how quickly things can shift. Payments are slow. Our generation or our parents’ will probably pay the same way when they die as they do today.

“There’s bene a lot of optimism, but I would rather operate in a very realistic market than an overly optimistic one. I feel it’s been slightly hyped.

Will companies have trouble raising?

“Some will have difficulty getting funded,” says van der Does. “It is easy to raise money for companies with a good outlook on the future. Sometimes companies that didn’t have realistic outlooks could still access to money because people wanted seat at the fintech gambling table, that’s gone now.”

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